The bicentenary weekend was a huge success!

Thank you to all that joined us to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Hansens’ 1814 arrival in New Zealand... read more

Newsletters, website links, society meeting minutes and social media.

Keep in the loop with our most recent news items and updates... read more

A family tree that stretches back 200 years.

Captain Thomas and Hannah Hansen started it all back in 1814 with their two children Thomas and Hannah... read more

Hohi, Bay of Islands, was where the first Europeans settled in New Zealand.

Built under the shadow of Chief Ruatara's pa at Rangihoua... read more

Welcome

This website is for extended members of New Zealand's 1814 Hansen family, researchers of the Hansen/King family history and anyone interested in the arrival of the first, permanent European settlers to New Zealand.

We were registered in 2011 as The 1814 Hansen Family Society Inc. If you would like to register your interest in becoming a member please use the form on the Contact page.

New Zealand Firsts...

Three days after arriving in the Bay of Islands, Rev Samuel Marsden held the first Christmas Day service on New Zealand soil and preached to European and Maori alike who had assembled on the slopes of Oihi under the shadow of Chief Ruatara's pa at Rangihoua.

The three original missionary families, Hall, Kendall and King, together with Thomas Hansen and his mother, Hannah, lived in a temporary, native style 'long house' until more permanent houses could be built. Here, in February 1815, Hannah King (nee Hansen) gave birth to Thomas Holloway King, the first European child to be born in New Zealand. Thomas also died here, less than four years later and was the first European child to be buried in New Zealand's first European cemetery.

The first CMS settlement of Rangihoua, was the venue for a remarkable number of 'firsts' in New Zealand's history. Prior to the arrival of Marsden's mission group in 1814, modern day Russell, or Kororareka as it was known in olden days, was considered to be the first place settled by the Europeans. But the itinerant sealers and whalers who visited that port had no wives or children with them. In 1806, the Venus dropped off two female escaped convicts from New South Wales plus a child but one woman died in the Bay of Islands and the other one was said to have left on another ship. Read more.